Rose, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a preliminary injunction to bar his discharge. His suit named Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen as principal defendant. At stake in addition to his job and income were the pension, health and life insurance, and other benefits when stepping down from the Navy honorably, as he expected to soon retire after 20 years of service. The Navy, after first resisting, acceded to the court's request to delay the discharge until January 27. Privacy advocates supported McVeigh's suit. David L. Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said: "It is probably the most clear-cut example we have of a violation of this statute on the part of the Government. If the Navy prevails, it will basically mean there is no meaningful protection against government intrusion in cyberspace." An America Online spokesman said: "We have clear policies in place that our member service representatives don't give out member information. What is disturbing to us is that the Navy may have circumvented established channels that we have for working with law enforcement in an attempt to get information about one of our members." A representative of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian military personnel, said: "Timothy McVeigh didn't work hard to get on anybody's radar screen. The only information that the Navy has is this AOL profile, and I think there's a strong argument that this is the sort of case that demands discretion from the military." Frank Rich thought McVeigh could be: Rich contrasted the different treatment the U.S. military afforded the two men named Timothy McVeigh. For years the U.S. Army ignored the racism and anti-government radicalism of Timothy J. McVeigh, who went on to perpetrate the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The U.S. Navy by contrast "torments the second, exemplary Timothy [R.] McVeigh for the crime of having a private life that should be nobody's business but his own". Before a hearing in the case, AOL acknowledged that its customer service representative should not have released information about McVeigh. It also said the Navy had violated federal law and reported that it had lodged protests with the Navy and Department of Defense. McVeigh's attorney also brought to court a statement from sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, architect of the DADT policy, who supported McVeigh and called the Navy's investigation